


is this heaven or is this hell?

by bethchildz



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: F/F, angst and smut? and a bit of fluff?, i don’t know i have a lot of feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:47:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23972485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bethchildz/pseuds/bethchildz
Summary: “There was one main objective in all of Samaritan’s simulations: to turn Shaw against her friends. It was pretty hard to do that when they were already gone.”Root is alive. Shaw is grappling with reality. Post series-finale.
Relationships: Root | Samantha Groves/Sameen Shaw
Comments: 12
Kudos: 132





	is this heaven or is this hell?

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write a little something and that little something turned into 7,000 words. Oops.
> 
> (The title is from Heaven/Hell by Chvrches.)

The park is stranded at this time of night. There’s a breeze picking up, bitter and cold (she can hear it rattling through the trees), and she should feel it burning her skin but she doesn’t. She doesn’t feel a thing. 

A flash of bright white light blinds her eyes. 

She knows what comes next; her head pounds in anticipation of it, her heart rate is up and it’s getting faster and faster and faster. Any minute now, she thinks, the simulation will end, she will wake up.

But wait. She doesn’t have her gun. There’s nothing in her hand at all, nothing cold, nothing metallic, but nothing warm either. Everything is still white – so bright, so insufferably bright – but she can’t hear the sound of the monitor beeping, she can’t hear voices. Surely it must be over by now. Surely it’s time to wake up. 

This time, it’s the metallic creak of the swing that brings her back to reality. The wind must have caught a hold of it, because there’s nobody to be seen, but it’s swinging gently back and forth, back and forth, and the motion makes Shaw’s stomach turn. She wants to be sick. She’s still sitting on the edge of the roundabout (not in a hospital bed in a Samaritan facility somewhere in Johannesburg, but here, here in New York) but she has no concept of the time – time doesn’t seem to matter when you’re constantly reliving the same day over and over and over again. 

But what day _is_ it? This time something feels off. If it is a simulation, it’s a weird one. Would Samaritan kill itself to trick Shaw – trick her into thinking this is all over? It would be a low blow, she thinks, even for an all-seeing all-evil God. She scoffs, the sound bubbling in her throat with a vibration that manages to shock her into feeling something, anything, even if it is simply the sensation of her own voice. She doesn’t even know how she got here. Pulling her hoodie closer around her chest, she begins to shiver, her body seemingly catching up with her surroundings, and for a second she manages to let herself exhale. Maybe this _is_ real.

After all, this time she’s alone. Has she ever been here alone? 7,000 simulations, and she always wound up here, her safe place, with her gun pointing at her own head. She can still feel her finger burning just before she pulls the trigger; she can still see the panicked despair in Root’s eyes. Again, her stomach turns, and for a second she thinks she may actually throw up. She’s dizzy, dizzier than she should be with only one glass of whiskey in her system. Goddamn Samaritan ruining her tolerance, did it leave _one_ thing alone? 

She could still use another drink. 

There was one main objective in all of Samaritan’s simulations: to turn Shaw against her friends. It was pretty hard to do that when they were already gone. What happened to Finch, she’s not sure anyone knows (besides The Machine, of course, though she couldn’t get a straight answer out of her even if she tried). And isn’t disappeared as good as dead? She knows Reese didn’t make it. The dickhead. 

And then there’s Root. 

Fucking Root.

The Machine was convincing, she’ll give her that. Taking her voice, faking the body. Shaw can still feel the rush of adrenaline, the fire burning in her stomach that had overtaken her body as she shot the asshole responsible for hurting her. Even now, her palms start to sweat and her heart starts to pick up speed once more as she imagines it: the way the life drained from his eyes as he hit the floor. God, she would do it again, right here and now, just for putting her in the position where it was _possible_ to fake her death. 

She had died. Finch was gone, Reese dead. Fusco had still been around, and she liked him enough – even cared for him – but she knew he was never in any immediate danger from Samaritan anyway. Perhaps being in the dark all that time really _was_ for his own good. It was possible, then, to believe it really was over – the war had been won, against all odds. Samaritan was offline. Her friends were gone. It couldn’t possibly be another simulation. 

And then one day she returned to her apartment to find Root leaning against the kitchen counter, her hand resting over her bandaged abdomen, and a lopsided apologetic grin on her pale face. (Of course she would break in. Of course she would be smiling.)

She could’ve punched her. In fact, she almost did. She felt her hands curl red hot into fists, but something stopped her, something hammering beneath her chest bone, spreading through her stomach and up her limbs. Something she reluctantly identified as relief. 

And now here she is, alone in the park in the middle of the night, grappling once again with reality. Root is back. She is alive. She is safe. The Machine is up and running – they’re even getting numbers again. But something itches in the back of Shaw’s mind, something scratches behind her ear. She touches it, over and over again, rubbing until it’s red and irritated, waiting until her fingers run over the lump she dreads to find. It isn’t there. It never is. But what if this is all a big joke? A trick? Killing Root and bringing her back again, that’s one way to break someone, isn’t it, to make them weak? What if she glitches again; what if the gun on her nightstand ends up in her hands in the middle of the night? 

She sees red. She sees blood and it isn’t hers. Her heart is racing, racing, racing. No, no, no—

_“The one person that I couldn’t kill was you.”_

The sound of her own foot moving against the metal beneath her grounds her again. She’s shaking now, more than before. Fuck, it’s cold. It’s cold and she isn’t getting anywhere. Why is she here? 

If this really is a simulation, she thinks, this one is particularly fucked up.   
  


* * *

The clock beside her reads 3:03 when she wakes up, and almost instantly she reaches out, finding nothing but cold sheets next to her. She bolts upright, the sweat from her nightmare clinging her shirt to her chest.

“Sameen?” She calls out in a croaky voice. There is no answer. The apartment is silent. A lump in her throat stops her from trying again; she knows it’s no use.

“Where is she?” Root asks, and this time her voice is clear. There is a brief cracking of static in her ear before The Machine sends her the coordinates.

“Thank you,” she says as she bounds out of bed, pulling on the nearest pair of jeans she can get her hands on, along with her leather jacket she finds draped over the couch. She hesitates for a moment at the door, her gun tucked discreetly into her waistband, before quickly removing it and leaving it on the coffee table. 

* * *

It must have been hours now, she decides. Her hands are shaking and her feet are numb. She finds comfort in the feeling of it. Why is she here? The roundabout remains stationary beneath her feet – she daren’t spin it, daren’t think of the way Root had kissed her here (but that hadn’t actually happened had it?), the way they fell into darkness together, over and over again. She remembers Greer’s face when she woke up the first time. She remembers the sinking feeling when he said her name (“ _Tell me about Samantha Groves.”_ ), the way the words felt heavy and obscure on his tongue, the way it made Shaw want to rip out his throat and watch him bleed.

She wishes she had made him bleed. He deserved to pay for this – for this moment right now, as she sits in the middle of the park at night while Root sleeps in a cold bed alone. She hasn’t touched her in months. She sees red, every time, she sees a gun and she hears a scream, she hears the elevator close and she hears her own gun fire, again and again and again.

That’s where it all stopped, that day in the Stock Exchange, that’s where time stood still – the last time her head felt clear, the last time she could see past the glow, the painfully white glow of Samaritan’s walls. (She had wanted to tear it apart bit by bit, to look it dead in the eye and unravel its brain, one piece at a time. Did it even feel pain when it took its last breath? Did it know what it feels like to die, over and over again? Did it feel the life rush out of its body?) 

She had kissed her that day; she watched it play out in her head every day in that hospital bed, watched as Samaritan played it on a loop and taunted her for it. Fucking Root. With her long hair in her face and wide, pleading eyes. She’d kissed her and everyone had watched. She’d kissed her and it hadn’t been enough.

_“If you wanna die, okay, but die for something that you love.”_

God, it would’ve been so much easier if she had died. If the bullets Martine fired into her body had worked, if one had hit her chest, if one had hit her brain (before Samaritan wormed its way in, before it took and took and took). It would’ve been easier – she would’ve never known what it felt like to turn the gun on Reese, to watch as Root held her body as she floated above. 

Root. 

Didn’t it always come back to her? When did that happen? She’s not sure she can pinpoint a moment when her mind became consumed with her, the infuriating feeling of her, everywhere, all at once. Was it that day, pushing her into the elevator? Running, and running. Was it the moment the drugs entered her system, lying in a bed somewhere in the middle of nowhere, Greer’s twisted face looming over her half-conscious body, when the one thing keeping her sane was thinking of the lips she had kissed, she had kissed and pushed away. Or did it come long before, when the push and pull made her want to tear her hair out, and the smirk on her face, the satisfied twitch of her eyebrow, drove her insane. She remembers pushing her into a wall, the first time, the way her eyes widened with something close to shock. She remembers the heat of her neck as she bit and licked and bit, leaving marks she knew she couldn’t hide. She’d wanted to bruise her. She’d wanted to run and she’d wanted to stay.

Root. Root, now tucked up in an empty bed, her hair splayed out on her pillow. She knows what it smells like now, and she hates it and she has never wanted anything more. She wants it now – but the kiss and the push, the gunfire and the drugs, the sinking feeling, the gun pressing against her own head. Root. Root. Root.

Something rustles in real-time (is this real-time?) and Shaw instinctively reaches for the gun that isn’t in her pocket. 

“Relax, sweetie. It’s me.” Her voice is gentle and she wants to punch her for it. She has a crease between her eyes, one that isn’t usually there. She put it there, she thinks, and she can’t summon anything to feel about that. She digs her nails into the palm of her hand. 

“What the hell are you doing here, Root?” she asks, and she thinks she sounds pathetic. She tries to find some other annoyed remark to throw her way, but her voice is tired, sleep-deprived. Her head is pounding. 

“Coming to take you home,” Root says like it’s obvious. Shaw manages to scoff at that, a sarcastic smile tugging at her chapped lips. (Root is standing a few steps away, only an inch or so away from the roundabout. Don’t get on it, she thinks, you’ll never get off. She suddenly feels nauseous.) 

Home? 

She’s not sure she’s ever understood the concept. 

A mattress and enough food to keep her going for a week is enough to make an apartment functional. She has never had use for anything else. But suddenly there’s a pair of bunny slippers beside her bed, and she hates the sight of them. There’s a lava lamp on her bedside table and every day she wants to smash it, throw it across the room and never see it again. There are chestnut brown hairs on her pillowcase and in the shower. She finds Root’s clothes mixed in with hers and she can feel herself sinking deeper, deeper into something she can’t have (can’t, can’t). 

“You don’t have to babysit me,” she snarls, and her vision is blurry. When it clears she can see Root tilting her head to the side, and her smile is teary. Her hands are in her back pockets, and she’s waiting. It seems like she’s always waiting. 

“It’s cold, Sameen,” she says and it surprises Shaw. She expects a quip, a joke, something to infuriate her even more. Instead, she finds herself caught off guard, staring up at the woman in front of her (she wants to push her away; she wants to throw her against the tree behind them). “I can keep you warm.”

There it is. 

“Go back to bed, Root.” 

The wind whistles through the trees and Shaw is angry. She’s always angry.

“Not without you.” 

There’s a seriousness in her tone Shaw doesn’t like. She’s been here before. Right here. She closes her eyes; she can see the gun again, pointing at Root this time. She can see her lip quivering just slightly, the tears threatening to spill over. She knows how this ends. 

“Just leave, Root,” she says, louder this time. Don’t push it, don’t push it, don’t push it. 

“I’m not leaving you again,” Root says around tears. She’s closer now, she’s going to step over the threshold, she’s going to—

She’s next to her in a matter of seconds. For a moment the roundabout shifts, and she almost thinks Root will fall. She feels everything spinning, spinning, spinning. Everything is bright again – too bright – and Martine is hovering over her, her blonde hair almost yellow in the overhead light. It makes her flinch, and she’s writhing, thrashing against her constraints. It hurts and she doesn’t care. It hurts and she pushes more and more. There’s a needle in her neck before she can bite. 

That’s how it goes – Root, the roundabout, falling, Martine. Root, the roundabout, falling, Martine. 

Except Martine isn’t here, and neither is Greer, nor Lambert. There are no needles, and no white light, there is just Root, and the roundabout, and falling. She grabs her arm before she stumbles, and Root gives her a sheepish grin (she doesn’t want to admit the way it makes her relax). When she settles in beside her Shaw sighs; the warmth of her body is stifling and she needs to feel cold. Root doesn’t say anything for a long time, and Shaw lets the silence stretch out around them. The trees are swaying more violently now; the sky is clouding over. It might rain, she thinks, and she closes her eyes tight. Falling, falling, falling.

“It’s real,” Root finally says, and her voice is too quiet, too small to be hers. Shaw knows Root is aware of what’s going on, she knows she has caught her awake in the middle of the night tossing and turning. She doesn’t need The Machine whispering in her ear to tell when Shaw isn’t okay. She hates her for it. Even now, she’s staring at her with that look in her eyes – the one that makes Shaw feel scrutinised. She’s looking, and she sees. She always sees.

“Do you know where you’re sitting?” Shaw surprises herself by asking. Her voice is scratchy and her throat burns. She knows Root will know; she can imagine the way The Machine is probably whispering snippets of information in her ear right now. She doesn’t answer, and she’s waiting again (always waiting). “I came here with you. Over and over again.” She thinks there are tears in her eyes but she can’t feel anything. Haven’t they had this conversation before? “When the torture was too bad. Before the simulations. Before…” She feels Root shift slightly beside her, and her hand is reaching out. She wants to push it away, she wants to, she really does. Her skin is warm against hers (how is she always so warm?), and she tangles their fingers together. She presses once, twice, three times. She remembers the first time she did this, the day Root was shot. She had almost kissed her, then, on the couch in the safe house. She had let herself slip, just slightly, over the edge. Over the precipice of Root and feeling. 

That was the last time she came so close. (She hasn’t touched her in months.)

“Do you know what it’s like… to not know if I’ve already done this before? I can remember it, Root. We were here, and I shot myself, over and over.”

“But you didn’t this time. Remember, I stopped you.”

Shaw laughs again. She doesn’t know where it comes from but it’s dark and she can feel Root’s hand twitch in hers. 

“You threatened to kill yourself too.”

“I told you, sweetie, I can’t live without you,” she says with a smile but it catches in her throat. 

Why are they here? The sun is going to rise soon. Another day in a post-Samaritan world, but Shaw is still here, staring at a spot near her foot, wondering if her head will ever stop pounding. Will this ever feel real?

“Let’s go home, Sameen,” Root tries again. 

The roundabout turns when they step off it, and the motion makes Shaw flinch. 

“I’ve got you,” Root whispers in her ear as she wraps her arms around her body. She feels consumed and trapped and she doesn’t move. She thinks she could sink into this and never let go. 

Root. Root. Root.

The gun isn’t in her hand. 

Maybe this is real.

* * *

She eventually falls asleep with another glass of whiskey in her bloodstream, and it courses through her veins as she sleeps. She wakes up once at 7am with a pounding in her head entirely unrelated to Samaritan, and Root is still softly snoring beside her (she’s so close, so close). She feels the pull of sleep tugging at her eyes and she succumbs to it again – hopes that when she closes her eyes it will be black, simply black. She never wants to see white again. 

When she awakes a few hours later, Bear is panting beside her. He has hopped on the bed between them and he’s looking at her expectedly. “Morning, buddy,” she drawls with sleep in her voice. He barks once, and it wakes Root with a start. It makes Shaw laugh, genuinely this time, and it feels strange in her throat. She scratches behind Bear’s ears, patting his head before he climbs over Root (eliciting a grumpy groan that makes Shaw struggle to contain her smile) and bounds out of the room, wagging his tail. When Root has come around completely, she turns to Shaw with a sleepy grin on her face. There are slight dark circles under her eyes (she knows Root isn’t sleeping well either, not that she would admit it), but Shaw hates how happy she looks to wake up like this. She’s falling. Falling and falling and she can’t look away from those brown eyes.

“Hey, baby,” Root coos, “how’d you sleep?” She says it like nothing has happened, as though she didn’t find Shaw alone in the park at 3am. She says it as though the pet name doesn’t make Shaw want to push her out of bed. All she gets in response is an eye roll, but it only makes Root grin harder. It sets something on fire within her, and she wants to run again, she wants to run and push and fight. She wants to wipe that smug look off her face. She could, she knows, she could lean in. She could pin her arms above her head (she’s done it so many times before), and watch her expression shift. She’s burning up and she’s so close to wrapping her hand around her throat. Falling, falling, falling.

But then Root is leaning in and her eyes are lidded, and it’s too much. She turns her head away before her lips can meet hers. Briefly, she registers Root’s slight sigh of disappointment, but before she knows it Root is sitting up, that grin plastered back on her face and she hates the understanding look in her eyes more than she hates the tingling in her gut. 

“I’ll make us breakfast,” Root announces and she leaves the bed with a rush of cold air. Shaw shivers and she’s grateful for it. Ignore the burning, ignore the burning.

(Root can’t cook. They both know it.)

And all of this is too familiar. The bed sheets, the tingling feeling, the pounding in her head, the way her lips ache with the absence of a kiss. But it’s backwards, and she’s confused, and her pulse is racing in her neck. If she closes her eyes she can see it all play out again and again, 7,000 times. She pushed her against the table 7,000 times. Sometimes it took longer than others, sometimes she was being pushed, but she was there every time. Her skin was on hers.

_“I guess you’re in the mindset now.”_

She remembers Root breathing the words into her neck, or between her thighs. Sometimes they were muffled by her own mouth. But there they were. With her eyes closed, she can still see Root’s devilish smirk. She can feel the heat of her tongue on her neck, the way her teeth touched skin – there was blood, blood on her lips. (She knows what comes next. It always comes next.) Red, she sees red. She sees her gun. Again, and again, and again, and every time she wishes she could stay caught up in brown hair and brown eyes for just a second longer. 

She has never told Root any of it. How she fell over the edge, time after time, with her fingers dragging fire along her skin. How Greer and Lambert saw everything. The thought makes her stomach flip and for a moment she sees stars. She’s blind with rage, an anger she’s used to but one that still courses through her veins with a venom that makes the bile rise in her throat. She hasn’t touched her in months. How long has it been? Since Root felt it too? 

She sees blue, an elevator, a kiss, a push, the sound of gunfire.

The kitchen smells of pancakes and burning when she finally makes her way out of bed. Root is in her ridiculous fluffy slippers and Shaw can’t stop staring at them. Sometimes, she can’t believe this woman is capable of murder. 

“Oh, you’re just on time,” she smiles, and offers Shaw a plate that looks somewhat edible. She’s too hungry to make a fuss so she grabs it. Root is smiling, she’s always smiling, and Shaw only stuffs the food in her mouth faster. She notices Root doesn’t have a plate of her own, and gives her a disapproving look. 

“I’ll eat later,” Root shrugs.

“Bullshit,” Shaw mutters around a mouthful of pancake. She knows Root doesn’t eat enough; she notices every time her hands start to shake when she’s skipped a meal; she knows when the apple she eats on a stake out is the most she’s eaten all evening. She may have even set a lunch reminder on her phone and pretended it was The Machine (she hopes she didn’t rat her out). 

“I’m fine, Sam. But thank you for worrying about me,” she says with a gleam in her eye. Shaw scoffs. Once upon a time, she would deny it. Today, she stays silent.

Falling, falling, falling.

* * *

It’s strange working the numbers without Reese and Finch at first. She knows Root misses Harold, and hates the way her lips turn into a frown when she’s hacking something particularly exciting without him. Shaw doesn’t speak nerd, and she wants to track down Finch herself just to punch the shit out of him for putting that sad look in Root’s eyes.

“He’s happy with Grace, Sameen. He doesn’t want to be found,” Root says when she sees her brooding one day. Shaw doesn’t give a shit. Root always put up with far too much from him anyway.

She’s angry and she wants to put the smirk back on Root’s face. She’s angry because she hasn’t touched her in months, and her hands are glued to her side. She’s angry and it’s easier to blame someone else.

* * *

She dreams about it all the time. It overtakes the nightmares about blowing her brains out. She is used to that one; she welcomes it now, the way the trigger feels when she pulls it. She’s used to waking not knowing what day it is.

But now she dreams of Root’s skin pressing against hers. She dreams of limbs tangled together and scratches down her back. Tonight she’s writhing in her sleep, she can feel it, and the fire is building in her stomach, it’s curling and curling and she’s going to scream. Root is above her, and she’s moving inside her, and she has never felt something so all-encompassing. The brown eyes looking down on her are almost black with desire; she can see her own face reflected in them and she’s unravelling (has she always looked so out of control?). She’s falling harder, and harder, and she swears this is where she drowns. 

She wakes with an uncontrollable ache between her legs and she’s sweating. It’s still early, the sun isn’t up yet, and it’s quiet. So painfully quiet. She doesn’t look to her side but she hopes Root is still asleep. If she looks, she’s afraid she’ll break. If she’s awake, she’s afraid she’ll cave. But the ache is getting stronger, and stronger, and she needs it gone. It’s almost out of her control, really, the way her hand reaches below her own waistband. She’s wet, embarrassingly wet, and she cringes as she feels herself. She needs more. She tries to work herself up slowly, but it doesn’t work; she needs it now, she needs it fast, and so she pushes hard and deep. She clamps her mouth shut, refusing to make a sound. She finds a rhythm quickly, and she’s so close, she’s so close.

But then there’s a moan, and she’s sure it doesn’t come from her own lips. She freezes.

“Don’t stop,” Root’s voice is low and deep next to her and Shaw’s entire body thrums with the vibration of it. Her fingers begin moving again, in and out, in and out. Root is gasping beside her – is she touching herself too? is she just watching? – Shaw can’t think about it, she’s sinking deeper and deeper.

“I can help you,” Root whispers, and Shaw thinks she sounds desperate. She squeezes her eyes shut tighter and pushes harder.

“You can’t,” Shaw manages between gasps. (She’s lying.) Root just moans louder. This isn’t what was supposed to happen, but she’s melting. She’s so close. She’s so close. “I’m, I’m—” 

She’s falling. She’s entirely out of control.

“Come for me,” Root begs, and the words work their way through Shaw’s brain; they settle somewhere beneath her fingers. She’s breathing too heavily, she’s losing it, she’s flying. She knows she calls out; she knows it sounds something like a name. It’s over in a flash.

Afterwards, she’s not sure whose breathing is the loudest. All she knows is she can’t look at Root. She turns to face the wall and pulls the covers up over her shoulders. Sleep comes quick and fast and she’s never been so grateful for it.

When morning comes, they don’t talk about it.

* * *

Today’s number is getting far too close to Root for Shaw’s liking. She’s watching from across the bar as the woman in question buys her a drink and devours her with her eyes. It makes Shaw’s skin crawl. 

She’d told Root this should’ve been her job. 

“I think we both know I’m better undercover, Sam,” she’d said with a wink. The Machine had agreed so there was no further argument. Assholes. 

A woman with a face full of piercings approaches Shaw with a shy smile. 

“Can I buy you a drink?” she says as she stuffs her hands in the pockets of her jeans. Shaw wants to punch her in the face. (“ _Play nice, Sameen.”_ She can hear Root’s voice in her mind and she wants to tell her to fuck off.) She knew this bar would be a bad idea. 

“I’m not interested,” Shaw mumbles, her eyes focussing entirely on the exchange happening at the other end of the bar. Root is flirting, she can tell by the way she’s flipping her hair, but it’s fake; she knows because the smile doesn’t meet her eyes. It still makes Shaw’s hands curl into fists. 

“Oh. You like her?” The woman asks, looking in Root’s direction.

“What?” Shaw looks up, ready to snap this woman’s neck.

“The woman in blue. You’ve been staring at her all night. Ask her out! Take it from me, she isn’t interested in the other girl,” the woman with piercings says conspiratorially, before walking away with a smile. 

Yeah, this was a terrible fucking idea. She just hopes it is over soon. The feeling is back in the pit of her stomach – she wants something, she can feel it burning a hole through her gut. She could do with a burger. Or a steak.

It’s easier to classify the feeling as hunger.

* * *

As it turns out, the case is wrapped up quicker than they first thought. Root isn’t quite done yet, though.

“Let’s live a little,” she winks as she drags Shaw back inside the gay bar. She can’t help but think she never thought she’d see Root in a place like this. She never thought she would be _with_ Root in a place like this.

Falling, falling, falling.

The club’s strobe lights still give her a headache and she wills herself not to think of Samaritan; the flashes, the white, the red, the blue. She drinks too much and her head is spinning and Root is right next to her in a dress that’s far too tight. Even with alcohol numbing her senses, she still scans the crowd for any face that seems out of place. She searches for Samaritan operatives everywhere she goes: in her sleep, in the grocery store. They’re not here, they’re never here, but she has never known what safety feels like. It eats away at her more than danger ever did.

Root’s hand is suddenly on her waist, and the other cups her cheek. It burns and she’s sure it leaves a mark. 

“It’s okay,” she whispers and she can’t hear it above the music but she seems to know what she’s saying anyway. She’s staring at Root’s lips now and they part slightly, and God, she wants to tackle her to the floor for this – for being here, for looking at her like that, for making her want something she shouldn’t want. Root’s hips are swaying and she can’t dance. Shaw leans in anyway and wishes she was sober enough to pretend she doesn’t want it. 

She wants it, and more, more, more. 

When she collapses drunkenly into bed that night, she doesn’t stop herself from watching intently as Root steps out of her blue dress. She can hear rather than see the smirk on Root’s lips.

“See something you like, Sameen?” 

“Shut up,” she says half-heartedly. She feels her pulse in her wrist. Her skin is burning up again.

She’s safe and she’s alive and Samaritan is offline. She repeats it like a mantra, but it never seems to be enough. If she reaches out, if she takes what she wants, how can she know they won’t fall? The roundabout is always spinning. Falling, falling, falling.

* * *

She doesn’t know how long it’s been now. She sees it in Root’s eyes sometimes: a longing. She would never admit it. As much as she pushes, and jokes, and flirts, she would never admit what she needs. Shaw wishes she would push her away. She wishes she would just push her against the wall. But she’s always waiting, always patient. She always has that look on her face, as though Shaw is the most precious thing she’s ever seen. 

She’s been close. So close.

Nothing has happened to convince Shaw this isn’t reality in a while. The world keeps turning, The Machine keeps sending them numbers, her nightmares have even calmed down. Root is still there every morning when she wakes up. At some point, she had accepted their arrangement – this shared apartment. She’d stopped kicking Root out a long time ago. She doesn’t think about it.

She thinks about kissing her. When she comes out of the shower and she doesn’t bother to hide the way the towel is far too short, she thinks about pressing her against the desk and leaving bite marks on the inside of her thigh. It makes her dizzy and she hates feeling so inebriated when she hasn’t even had a drink. Spinning and spinning and spinning.

It’s worse when Root wakes up in the middle of the night after her own nightmares. Her hair sticks to her forehead and there’s a frightened look in her eyes that sends a burning sensation straight through Shaw’s chest. On those nights, Root’s hand often rubs gentle circles over the scar on her abdomen and Shaw wants to kill the man responsible all over again. 

“Does it hurt?” Shaw asks one night.

“A little,” Root admits, and she turns her head to face her. Her cheeks are flushed and her eyes are tired and Shaw thinks she’s never seen her look so beautiful. She’s falling and she hates herself. She had died for this woman, over and over again. And she hasn’t touched her in months.

Root turns on her side and reaches out to push a stray strand of hair behind Shaw’s ear. When did Shaw let this happen? The bed seems unstable beneath the weight of her body. She worries briefly that the ceiling is going to collapse in on her; she worries it’s all fake, that on the other side of these four walls lies a Samaritan facility – white, painfully white. But nothing moves; Root is staring at her with a hopeful look in her eyes. She feels something shifting, she feels it and she can’t pinpoint what it is. 

“I killed him,” Shaw says out of nowhere. There’s a dark smile in her voice.

“I know,” Root whispers, and there are tears in her eyes. Of course she knows. She always knows. She leans in closer before saying, “Thank you.” She whispers it into her ear and kisses the skin beneath it. Shaw should pull away, she knows where this is going. She can’t let herself sink any deeper; she can’t put her in danger like that. She’s been here before. But Root’s lips move to her neck and she can’t push her away even if she wants to. 

“Root…” she warns, but she lies back; she turns her head and Root takes the opportunity to kiss down her jawline.

“You did that for me,” she mumbles into her skin. Moving down her neck, she pulls the skin of her pulse point between her teeth and Shaw cries out. She could sink into this, she could let the fire burn the whole room into ashes. “Let me do this for you.”

She wants to let her drown her. She’s sinking and falling and she wants nothing more. 

Instead, she grabs Root by her shoulders and pushes her into the pillows. She’s clutching for something, for anything. She’s so far over the precipice she doesn’t even remember what it looks like. Root is smirking, and it’s the same smile, it’s the same smile as always and she feels it between her legs. Shaw is straddling her now, and Root is writhing beneath her but she only grinds her hips down harder, pinning her to the bed. They watch each other for a beat or two, and Shaw’s chest is heaving.

Before she knows what’s happening, Root is out of her grasp; her hands are on her face and she’s pulling her in, closer and closer. Her lips are on hers and there’s something wrong; there’s something incredibly wrong. It’s soft. Everything about the kiss is soft. Too soft. She can do rough, she can do dangerous, she can do painful – bleeding, bruises, scratches. But this is different; it twists itself around Shaw’s gut and she wants to fight it (everything in her nature is screaming to fight it) but she’s spinning, spinning, spinning. And all that’s left is Root. Root’s soft lips against hers. 

“Let me look after you,” Root whispers into the damp skin of her neck. It makes Shaw want to scream. 

“I don’t need looking after,” she says with indignation. But she’s leaning back, and her head is falling to the pillows.

She expects Root to smirk, to make a joke, to call her sweetie (and is that what she wants? The familiarity of it?) but she doesn’t. She looks up for a moment, unshed tears lighting her brown eyes almost golden. She sees something reflected there and she wants to cry out, to run away. She wants to fight, to kick and scream.

“Let me look after you,” she says again. Shaw wants to say yes, yes, yes, but she feels herself rolling her eyes instead. It’s good enough.

Root gets the message and her smile almost splits her face in half. She leaves red hot kisses down her neck and her hands are everywhere at once: running up the length of her thigh, up her chest, and Shaw can feel the burning sensation building from her toes. She’s too far gone. She’s falling and she doesn’t know where she’s going to end up. 

“Root,” she whines, arching her back and threading her fingers in her hair. She pulls, she pushes, she lets herself fall. And Root is moving down, down, down and all of a sudden she’s right where Shaw needs her most, and the feeling of her tongue against her skin makes her scream out. She drags it out, she knows what she’s doing, and Shaw’s fingers only dig into her scalp harder. It does nothing to pick up Root’s speed. If anything, she goes slower, and Shaw has never felt such acute desire: desire to sink and fall and drown and wrap her hands around her neck. 

When the orgasm hits, it’s long and slow and not at all what she wants. (But it is. It’s everything and more.)

“You’re gonna pay for that,” Shaw pants, her breathing fast and erratic. Root just raises her eyebrows. 

“I don’t know, Sameen, from where I’m sitting it looks like you enjoyed it,” she smirks, and she’s wiping her face and Shaw wants to kill her. She kisses her instead: hard and fast. It’s all she can do to stop the feeling that she’s spinning completely out of control. She bites her lip and Root moans and this is everything she needs. It takes her a few seconds to flip her over and strip her of her clothes. It takes a further few seconds to sink into her, bit by bit, and she’s sure the walls should start crumbling by now. It’s been too long. She waits for the light, for the mask on her face, for the beeping and the talking. But instead there’s only Root and she’s staring at Shaw, her eyes lidded and full of want, watching her face intently. 

“More,” she pleads and Shaw doesn’t need to be told twice. It doesn’t take long, but Shaw absorbs every second of it. It’s different to the simulations, the way she comes, she realises that now: she has a smile on her face, like she always does, and her voice is lower. There’s something so incredibly human about it, something no machine could replicate. Samaritan took a lot – she thought it took everything – but it couldn’t take this. She’s on fire and she doesn’t care if this is what it feels like to fall, and fall, and fall. She’s never felt so real.  
  


* * *

_“You and me together would be like a four alarm fire in an oil refinery.”_

She had been right. But, of course, Root had been too. After all, she should have known she’d love the way it burns.


End file.
